Smoked Lau Lau

Lau lau is pork and salted butterfish bundled in lūʻau (young taro) leaves, wrapped again in ti leaves, and steamed for hours in the imu — the underground oven. The ti leaf is the vessel, not the food; you unwrap and discard it. The lūʻau leaf inside cooks down to something like creamed spinach and is very much the point. Be clear about what this recipe is: an adaptation. A smoker is dry heat, an imu is wet heat, and no backyard pit reproduces what happens under hot rocks and wet burlap. What it can do is add a layer of kiawe smoke that an imu doesn't give you, and get a genuinely good bundle out the other side.

One thing that is not negotiable. Raw taro leaves contain needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals that burn the mouth and throat. Long moist cooking — an hour minimum, and here you're going four — breaks them down. Do not shortcut the time, do not taste the filling early, and never serve a lau lau that hasn't gone the distance. Use a water pan and keep the bundles tight so they steam inside their own wrapper while the outside takes smoke.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs pork butt, cut into 2-inch chunks
• 1/2 lb salted butterfish (black cod), rinsed and soaked in cold water 1 hour, then cut into 6 pieces
• 36-42 lūʻau (young taro) leaves, thick stems and center ribs cut out — 6-7 leaves per bundle
• 12 ti leaves, backbone shaved flat with a knife so they fold without cracking
• 2 Tbsp Hawaiian sea salt (paʻakai)
• Butcher's twine
• Water for the pan — no beer, no juice, it all ends up as steam anyway

Cook Sequence

1. Salt the pork chunks and let them sit 30 minutes while you fire the pit to 275°F with a full water pan and kiawe chunks on the coals.
2. Stack 6-7 taro leaves per bundle, largest on the bottom, veins facing up. Center 2-3 pork chunks and a piece of butterfish on the stack.
3. Gather the taro leaves up around the filling into a tight ball, folding the edges in so nothing shows. Any gap dries out and turns bitter.
4. Cross two ti leaves, set the taro ball in the middle, fold all four ends over the top, and tie hard with twine. Tight is the whole technique — the bundle has to hold its own steam.
5. Bundles on the grate, seam side up. Smoke 4 hours at 275°F, topping off the water pan at the halfway mark. Add no wood after 90 minutes; ti leaf only takes so much smoke before it goes acrid.
6. Probe through the wrap into the pork at the 3.5-hour mark. You want 195-200°F and a bundle that feels heavy and slack. If it's firm, keep going — undercooked taro leaf is not a texture problem, it's a mouth problem.
7. Rest 20 minutes still wrapped, then cut the twine at the table. Untie the ti leaf, eat everything inside it, throw the ti leaf away.

Round Out the Plate

• Lomi Lomi Salmon — the cold, sharp plate-mate lau lau is always served with
• Hawaiian Mac Salad — rounds out the lūʻau plate
• Haupia — the coconut finish